Chocolate Truffles and Dogs...

So this morning I was going to make chocolate truffles.  A friend and I are going to get together and bake a bunch of goodies for Christmas gift baskets and I found a recipe for chocolate truffles and I wanted to try it out and see if they're any good.  It's more of an excuse to have truffles really, though if they're good, I'll freeze most of them and use them for the baskets.  High quality dark chocolate isn't cheap you know.

Anyway, I got all my ingredients out and couldn't find the butter.  The supermarket we order our groceries from hadn't delivered it.  It was right there on the receipt! Unsalted butter!  But it wasn't in my fridge.  Dangit.  At least they didn't charge me for the stainless steel mixing bowl I ordered from them in the same order.  We don't have a car so we have to do our big grocery shops by delivery.  It's annoying, but what are you gonna do?

So rather than make truffles  this morning (I'll do it later after I walk to the super market.  I also need to pick up coffee because I accidentally ordered beans rather than ground coffee.), I'm going to write a little bit about my dog.  Well, not necessarily my dog, but dogs in general.

Steve and I love our dog.  Who couldn't love that face?  She's amazing.  Super smart, very loving (especially of shoes and expensive headphones), incredibly loyal and she loves us just as much as we love her, in fact maybe more.

Almost a year ago BBC's Horizon (they do really great documentaries for all of you Stateside folk) did a documentary called The Secret Life of the Dog.  I found it sooooo very interesting and really enjoyed watching it.  I wish I could watch it again because I don't really remember all that much about it.  What I do remember was something about people and dogs and oxytocin levels.  So I decided to look it up.

What I found was decidedly awesome.

First let me define oxytocin for anyone who is unfamiliar or needs a refresher.  It's a neurotransmitter in your brain, often known as the "love hormone" or the "cuddle hormone."  It's most often associated with lactating mothers because it's released during breastfeeding to bond a mother to her baby.  It also can play a role in pair-bonding and social recognition.  Lastly, it's used to induce labor, though I'm not exactly sure what kind of role it plays here.  I think something having to do with contractions.

So, a lot of studies have been done between dogs and humans measuring their levels of oxytocin before, during and after play, petting and eye contact.  The first one I came across, just measured the human's oxytocin levels, and found that they rose by more than 20% on average when playing with their own dog.  So playing/making eye contact with our dogs bonds us to them even more.  These researchers believe that this bond formed/made stronger through eye contact may contribute to the domestication of dogs.

The next study I came across measured the oxytocin level in both dogs and humans as well as the cortisol levels.  Cortisol is a hormone which is released when we're stressed out.  Not only do oxytocin levels rise in humans when we pet our dogs but they also rise in our dogs as well.  And our cortisol levels drop.  So now our dogs are bonding to us just because we're petting them.  Not psychologically but physiologically.  AND we're getting less stressed out.

I came across another article which is a good general summary of a lot of the big studies done between dogs and humans on oxytocin levels.  It's a good read.

All of this is very interesting, but what does it mean?  Well, it provides an explanation for those of us who are ridiculously attached to our dogs.  Or those people who call their dogs their "babies."  It also tells us why dogs make such great therapy animals.  Lastly, it gives us a glimpse as to how dogs may have first become domesticated.  And it's all just kind of neat.